Acts 7:46

Acts 7:46 oi;kw| {B}

Of the two readings, oi;kw| is to be preferred on the basis of both external evidence (it is supported by a combination of Alexandrian and Western witnesses: î⁷⁴ a* B D cop^sapt al) and transcriptional probability, for there is no good reason why scribes should have altered qew|/ to oi;kw|, whereas the apparent difficulty of the expression “a habitation for the house of Jacob” as well as the temptation to assimilate it to the Septuagint text of Psalms 132:5 [= LXX 131:5] (e[wj ou- eu[rw to,pon tw|/ kuri,w|( skh,nwma tw|/ qew|/ VIakw,b) would have influenced many to emend the text.

Some scholars who regard the reading oi;kw| as intrinsically too difficult in the context (“[David] found favor in the sight of God and asked leave to find a habitation for the house of Jacob. (47) But it was Solomon who built a house for him”), and yet who acknowledge that qew|/ is secondary to oi;kw|, believe that a primitive error has corrupted all extant witnesses. Lachmann conjectured that the original reading was eu`rei/n skh,nwma tw|/ oi;kw| tou/ qeou/ VIakw,b, ¹⁶² and Hort suggested that kuri,w| had fallen out of the text (twk=w= being mistaken for twoikw). ¹⁶³ Against Hort’s suggestion, however, is the absence in both Old and New Testament of the expression “Lord of Jacob,” whereas “God of Jacob” and “house of Jacob” are both well known.

Without indicating a preference, Knowling observes that “in LXX, Ps. cxxxi:3, we have skh,nwma oi;kou, and a similar expression may have been the orig. reading here; again, in Ps. xxiv:6, Heb., we have ‘Jacob’ = ‘the God of Jacob’ (LXX 23:6), and it has been suggested that some such abbreviation or mode of speech lies at the bottom of the difficulty here.” ¹⁶⁴ Ropes also was dissatisfied with oi;kw| and concludes his discussion of the variant readings with the supposition that “if we have here a translation from an Aramaic source, it is easy to suppose that the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew phrase was first rendered by tw kuriw iakwb, and then this unusual expression corrupted to the familiar-sounding but inappropriate phrase tw oikw iakwb.” ¹⁶⁵

Not all scholars, however, are agreed that the reading oi;kw| is so lacking in sense as to require conjectural emendation. Lake and Cadbury, for example, remark that “after all, the Temple, like the Tabernacle, was a house or tent ‘of meeting,’ and it was to be used by the house of Jacob as well as by the Almighty.” ¹⁶⁶ Furthermore, as Klijn points out, Stephen’s “idea of a house within the house of Israel as a substitute for the temple and thus as the real temple of God,” an idea not known heretofore in Jewish literature, has now been paralleled in the Manual of Discipline from Qumran — a fact that seems to support the originality of the reading oi;kw|. ¹⁶⁷

¹⁶² Novum Testamentum graece et latine, vol. II (Berlin, 1850), p. viii.

¹⁶³ “Notes on Select Readings,” p. 92.

¹⁶⁴ The Expositor’s Greek Testament, vol. II, p. 198.

¹⁶⁵ The Text of Acts, p. 72.

¹⁶⁶ The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. IV, p. 81. The same idea is set forth at length by José M.^a Bover in his “Notas de crítica textual neotestamentaria,” Emérita, boletín de lingüística y filologia clásica, XVIII (1950), pp. 381—385; Eng. summary, pp. 581 f. Compare also F. C. Synge in Theology, LV (1952), pp. 25—26.

¹⁶⁷ A. F. J. Klijn, “Stephen’s Speech — Acts vii. 2—53, ” New Testament Studies, IV (1957), pp. 25—31, especially 29—31.